


Don't You Worry, Love

by amberwoods



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hostage Situations, Modern AU, Self-Sacrifice, Terrorism, or the one where Juvia tries to give her life for her co-worker Gray
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 12:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6116995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberwoods/pseuds/amberwoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the office where Juvia works is under attack and the man she loves is threatened, she sacrifices herself for the sake of the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't You Worry, Love

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: angst.

It took her two hours before she had enough courage to walk over to her co-worker’s desk and ask him some stupid question about a stupid computer programme she didn’t understand. She’d gone over it a hundred times in her head and she’d put on some concealer so maybe he wouldn’t see how badly she was blushing. The bluenette was extremely, irrevocably in love with Gray after all.

Nevertheless, it took only a second for her efforts of the entire day to be ruined.  

They were with six, all carrying guns. She didn’t understand why they’d target their department. Sure, they worked at the largest paper of Fiore, but their department could hardly be called important. Nevertheless, they had been chosen.

That’s how she ended up face-first on the ground, scared to death for both her own and her co-workers’ safety. Beside her, also on his stomach, his face turned towards her, lay the man she was madly in love with. And if things went south, these might very well be the last moments of his life.

She was terrified. She’d never seen a gun before, or terrorists. She’d become white as death and she felt like she was about to cry. Surely, that was justified now.

Gray looked calmer. Or, well, different. He was absolutely tense, but somehow she knew that part of that tension was anger. He had the usual frown on his face, but his eyes looked colder than normally. Juvia stared at him.

She’d met him right here, in this building. She spilled coffee over him in the hallway on her very first day. When he took off his white shirt in annoyance, she’d been even more flustered than before that. She’d seen her share of men (only one man, to be honest), but this one was completely different. Gray was stunning, so symmetrical and well-built, and part of her just wanted to eternalise him in a painting. Less than two weeks after that, she’d realised she was in love.

She was so in love.

Gray was stern and professional. He was meticulous in his planning and inventive in his ideas. He worked fast and hard and he had a low tolerance for the defects of others. Still, he regularly smiled at people or made a joke. You just had to pay attention.

Most people found Gray intimidating and, honestly, so did Juvia. However, that somehow just captured her more. Everything about him pulled her in. She tried her hardest when doing projects with him, shining brightly when he praised her or gave her one of his smiles. She looked up to him, to his professional expertise. And sometimes, when he was so tired he could barely keep his head up, she slipped him an extra cup of coffee, which he always gulped down like it was water, without even noticing her, it seemed. But that didn’t matter. Juvia didn’t love Gray because she wanted him to notice her. She loved him, with every fibre of her being, because of who he was. She had no control over it. As long as Gray was Gray, she loved him, every time she saw him a little bit more. 

Everybody knew, probably, except for Gray. Or maybe Gray did as well, seeing as most of his co-workers did and they didn’t hold back from discussing it on the work floor sometimes. Someone might have even asked him what he thought about it. If this was the case, Juvia didn’t know. Although telling Gray himself hardly ever crossed her mind, she’d never made a secret of her feelings to anyone else. She was unable to. They just poured out and took over her expression, her lungs, the colour of her face. When asked, she answered truthfully. Yes, she might have a crush on him. But shouldn’t they go back to work instead of asking her this?

She wasn’t all that bad. She didn’t sneak pictures of him, for instance. Although she did hoard all the pictures of the employee’s excursion with him in it.

Gray made her life better, and he didn’t even know it. And now maybe he never would.

She blinked away the tears in her eyes so she could look at him properly again. He had his arms next to his head, but now he was stretching them little by little, bringing his hands together above his head. The ground was very uncomfortable, but she didn’t understand his movement. That is, until his right hand reached for the watch on his left wrist.

Gray caught her looking, her eyes shooting from his face to the watch and back. Apparently, she’d figured out what he was doing. And she looked positively terrified.

Half the office was jealous of Gray’s watch. It was a prototype WebWatch, with connection to the internet and a direct link to his phone. He’d got it from a friend of his who had designed the thing.

Now all he had to do was send one quick text message via the watch’s touchscreen. He kept his eyes on Juvia, but his hands started moving again.

Panic shot through Juvia’s body. If he got caught, who knew what would happen to him. Nevertheless, at the same time she knew that this may very well be there best chance of alarming someone to the danger they were facing. So she did nothing. She didn’t shake her head or nod. She just kept looking him straight in the eye, practically paralysed.

Gray’s finger reached his watch. He pressed a button on the side of it and the little screen lit up. Immediately, he covered it with his hand. Then, he turned his face to the floor and crooked his neck to look at the device, tilting his wrists towards himself so he could see.

The moment his eyes left Juvia’s she felt a chill run down her spine. She felt like she was watching someone diffuse a bomb.

In the background, she could hear the voice of their boss’s office being opened. Three out of six of the terrorists had gone in there and were holding a gun to Makarov’s head. Now, one of them came out.

“Pick a good one!” a voice called out from the office, “Someone who will leave a mark.”

“Don’t underestimate my flair for the dramatic,” another voice called back. He sounded like he was grinning.

While Juvia was watching Gray’s movements intensely, her ears were focused on the sound of the man’s footsteps coming closer little by little from the other side of the floor. At about 70 feet distance, he stopped to talk to the accomplice that was keeping an eye on their side of the floor.

Gray was struggling. He couldn’t reach the touchscreen at the right angle from this position and he couldn’t move too obviously.

When footsteps started approaching them again, Gray was too focused to hear. Juvia, however, felt panic rush over her with every step. She stared at Gray intensely, willing him to just _look up_ so she could warn him. If that guy saw what he was doing, he’d be dead.

Juvia was experiencing a feeling she remembered from school. In class, when the teacher would have to pick someone to answer his question, sometimes a sense of dread would just fall over her, and she knew that she’d be picked.

The trail of footsteps stopped right behind them.

A snigger crept on on them and Gray froze in pure fear. Before he knew it, he was being pulled up by his right arm, pulling his hand away from the watch on his left wrist.

“Yes, you’ll do just fine,” he heard from behind him.

But he really wouldn’t.

Juvia acted on instinct. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed Gray’s wrist. “No!”

For the first time, she looked at the man’s face. He had a scruffy beard, thick, blond eyebrows and a look on her face that filled her with terror. Still, she looked him straight in the eye. She would not back down.

“Back on your knees,” the man growled at her and he let go of Gray for a moment to reach for her.

“No!” Juvia cried again and she cowered, wrapping her arms around her lower abdomen and bowing forward.

Gray’s horror doubled when he connected the dots and saw that the terrorist had as well.

“Pregnant?” the man murmured.

Juvia looked up. There were tears in her eyes and she looked absolutely helpless. The grin of the terrorist sent shivers down her spine.

“Now won’t that make a statement?” he asked. He threw Gray back on his knees and grabbed Juvia’s arm instead. She cried and struggled, but he just dragged her along.

As he did, she looked over her shoulder. Gray was staring at her with wide eyes and desperation. His hand was around his wrist. While she’d grabbed him, Juvia had clicked away the text message. Just in time. When Juvia smiled at him just before she was dragged out of his sight, he could swear his heart broke a little.

The young woman kept a hand pressed tightly over her empty uterus, cradling a non-existent baby. Pregnant? Who would have got her pregnant? She hadn’t slept with someone in years. Still, she was happy she’d come up with the ridiculous idea. Now, at least she would be the one to face the greater danger. Gray would have a chance to send his text message.

More importantly, Gray would have a chance to survive. She didn’t doubt that she was being led to her execution.

Some of her colleagues followed her with her eyes when she passed them by. Juvia made sure to look defeated. And, truthfully, she was. She’d done all she could now. She just hoped it would be enough.

The terrorist threw her into her boss’s office. She landed on her knees on the floor and didn’t look up, her hands still holding onto the nothingness inside her body. Makarov was staring at her, horror in his eyes. A man was holding a gun to his head.

“And?” a voice asked, “How dramatic is it?”

“Pregnant woman,” the man behind her answered the voice, “Dramatic enough for you?”

“Excellent.”

“Get up,” the man snapped and he pulled her back up by her arm. Her heart was racing and she was quickly becoming nauseous. She was about to die.

This time, he threw her against the glass wall that separated Makarov’s office from the rest of the floor. Her face was pressed against the cold material and when she opened her eyes, some of her co-workers were looking back at her. Quickly, she closed her eyes again. She couldn’t look at them. She just hoped Gray had managed to send the message.

“You have one more chance, Mack,” the terrorist that was holding a gun to Makarov’s head said, “Give us the code and she won’t have to die.”

Her boss was quiet for a moment. Then, with shaking voice, he said: “Even if I give you the code, you will kill her.”

“Oh,” the man behind Juvia said, “He’s seen through us.”

Juvia heard a click and she knew there was now a gun pointed at her own head as well. With the safety off. She swallowed and opened her eyes again.

Her heart stopped.

Outside of the office, held up by another man, Gray was staring at her. He had been pulled up again and  dragged closer to the office. They wanted him to watch.

“She sacrificed herself for you,” the guy had said, “You’d better watch it to the end, don’t you think? Why you’re still alive.”

Now Juvia was looking back at him with big, blue eyes, her forehead pressed against the glass and her arms still holding her lower abdomen.

“One more chance,” the man behind her said.

“No,” Makarov whispered.

Juvia closed her eyes again for a moment when her fate was sealed. It felt like her heart dropped to the floor. Then, she took another deep breath and opened her eyes. She looked up, into Gray’s eyes on the other side of the glass, and smiled.

 _I’m not scared_ , she wanted to say, _I don’t regret it_.

Although she was scared. Although she regretted so much. Although she wanted to live.

But until the last second, she wanted to look at him. She wanted to love him.

She mouthed the three words to him, even if she knew he could never read her lips from this distance. She wanted to say it at least once. Just once.

Then she heard the sound of glass breaking.

The men behind her starting screaming and instinctively she dropped herself on the ground, her hands around her head. Noises outside made her open her eyes and she saw how a SWAT-team came rushing into the office on the other side of the glass. When she turned around, the terrorists in the room were laying in pools of their own blood and the windows were shattered. _A sniper_ , she thought. Gray managed to send it. He’d been able to send it.

She was still disoriented when people stormed into the room, checking whether the men were really dead and picking her up off the floor. She couldn’t say a word, couldn’t even open her mouth. They checked her haphazardly as well when she couldn’t reply, then pulled her towards the office’s door gently. She could hardly stand.

When she was in the doorway, she finally looked up. Her co-workers were scrambling to their feet, crying, shaking, and still, in the path to the office, Gray was looking at her.

“Juvia!”

He called out her name wildly, hoarsely, and it was like she awakened. Emotions took over her face, relief, fear, need, desperation. She started running.

Gray pushed himself through the people standing in his way, co-workers and SWAT-team members alike. Then, finally, he caught her in his arms. Juvia was sobbing as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He held her tightly to himself, one hand across her back, the other in her hair. She cried loudly.

Then, after a moment or two, he loosened his grip a little. “The baby?” he stammered.

Juvia looked at him, tears in her eyes, and swallowed so she could speak through her tears. “There is no baby,” she sobbed, “I’m not pregnant.”

Gray caught his breath as relief rushed over him in warm waves. He pulled her back towards him, back into his arms.

“Thank you,” he stammered beside her ear. She could hardly hear him through her sobs. “Thank you, Juvia.”

**Author's Note:**

> Of course it has a happy ending, I'm basically incapable of writing anything else. Thank you for reading!


End file.
